Contagious Disease Transport

Phoenix Air is currently the only company in the world with the capability to transport patients with a Highly Infectious Disease in an ICU environment and as such, has become the go-to resource for the U.S. Government and World Health Organization (WHO) to perform these missions. A cooperative effort between the CDC, the Department of Defense and Phoenix Air in 2007 led to the development of the ABCS (Airborne Biological Containment System), a single patient, negative pressure isolation unit, designed and certified to be used in our G-III aircraft. The ABCS unit was used successfully during the Ebola outbreak of 2014-2015 to transport 41 patients without incident to hospitals in the U.S. and Europe.

This led to the development of a multi patient transport unit, the CBCS (Containerized Biological Containment System), which has the capacity to transport four highly contagious patients in an ICU environment. The size of the CBCS requires it to be flown inside a B747-400 cargo aircraft. Training exercises are conducted several times annually, flying multiple aircraft to Africa, to maintain the high level of skills required to perform these missions. The Contagious Disease program is operated under a multi-year contract with the U.S. Department of State (DOS).